The Modern AI Excel Stack for Finance & Accounting

Learn to build a modern AI-powered Excel stack for finance & accounting with live demos, frameworks, and Q&A.

AI tools are showing up everywhere in Excel, but most finance teams are still struggling to use them in a way that is reliable, auditable, and actually useful.

In this 60-minute live session, George Mount (Microsoft MVP, O’Reilly author) walks through the modern AI Excel stack using real workflows, not slideware. You will see Power Query, Copilot, Office Scripts, and Power Automate applied to realistic finance scenarios, along with a practical framework for deciding where AI fits and where it creates risk.

This session is designed for professionals responsible for reporting, analysis, or data workflows, not casual Excel users. The focus is on building processes that hold up under real-world scrutiny, not one-off tricks.

What You'll Learn

• The SAFE Framework: A four-question lens for deciding when AI helps and when it introduces risk. Stop asking "How can we use AI?" and start asking "Should we?"
• Power Query for auditable data cleaning: See how to build a reproducible, deterministic data pipeline that your auditor can trace step by step.
• Copilot for exploratory analysis: Watch Copilot analyze P/E ratios, draft an executive summary, and build a multi-sheet analysis.
• Office Scripts + Power Automate: A short script that validates your data and logs results automatically, no clicking required.
• Scripts vs. Prompts: Know when you need a guaranteed answer (deterministic) versus a helpful suggestion (probabilistic), and pick the right tool.

Who This Is For

• Finance and accounting professionals who use Excel daily
• Analysts exploring Copilot, Power Query, or AI automation
• Team leads evaluating where AI fits in existing workflows

Not intended for beginners or general Excel overviews.

What's Included

• Live session with Q&A (recording available to Stringfest members)
• Prompt guide with every demo prompt used in the session
• Demo workbook so you can follow along

About the Presenter

George Mount is the author of Advancing Into Analytics and Modern Data Analytics in Excel (O'Reilly Media), a Microsoft MVP for Excel & Data Platform, and a LinkedIn Learning instructor. He helps finance and accounting teams move from fragile spreadsheets to confident, scalable analysis through training, consulting, and workshops at Stringfest Analytics.

Want access to the recording and the full Stringfest content library? Join the Modern Excel Playbook membership.